English

Spin Self-Force

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2019-11-27 v3

Abstract

We consider the motion of charged and spinning bodies on the symmetry axis of a non-extremal Kerr-Newman black hole. If one treats the body as a test point particle of mass, mm, charge qq, and spin SS, then by dropping the body into the black hole from sufficiently near the horizon, the first order area increase, δA\delta A, of the black hole can be made arbitrarily small, i.e., the process can be done in a ``reversible'' manner. At second order, there may be effects on the energy delivered to the black hole---quadratic in qq and SS---resulting from (i) the finite size of the body and (ii) self-force corrections to the energy. Sorce and Wald have calculated these effects for a charged, non-spinning body on the symmetry axis of an uncharged Kerr black hole. We consider the generalization of this process for a charged and spinning body on the symmetry axis of a Kerr-Newman black hole, where the self-force effects have not been calculated. A spinning body (with negligible extent along the spin axis) must have a mass quadrupole moment S2/m\gtrsim S^2/m, so at quadratic order in the spin, we must take into account quadrupole effects on the motion. After taking into account all such finite size effects, we find that the condition δ2A0\delta^2 A \geq 0 yields a nontrivial lower bound on the self-force energy, ESFE_{SF}, at the horizon. In particular, for an uncharged, spinning body on the axis of a Kerr black hole of mass MM, the net contribution of spin self-force to the energy of the body at the horizon is ESFS2/8M3E_{SF} \geq S^2/8M^3, corresponding to an overall repulsive spin self-force. A lower bound for the self-force energy, ESFE_{SF}, for a body with both charge and spin at the horizon of a Kerr-Newman black hole is given. This lower bound will be the correct formula for ESFE_{SF} if the dropping process can be done reversibly to second order.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1909.03970,
  title  = {Spin Self-Force},
  author = {Kristian Mackewicz and Robert M. Wald},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1909.03970},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

23 pages, no figures; references added in v2; footnote regarding term proportional to mS in spin self-force energy added in v3

R2 v1 2026-06-23T11:09:58.436Z